by JOHN YORVIK
“Where are we going?” said Dani.
“Costa Coffee, we need to get this laptop re-stolen.”
We walked into Costa and found a table. I got out the laptop and turned it on. After a few minutes I keyed in the password. Dani took out a handkerchief and began to clean it down to get rid of any of our fingerprints. When she was finished, I went to the counter carrying our backpacks to order some coffees and food. Dani went off to the toilets to hide for a while. I lifted her backpack off the floor and weighed it against my own. It was easily twice as heavy.
When I got back to the table with the coffees, the laptop was gone. Dani arrived back soon after.
“I didn’t see anyone that might steal something in here,” said Dani.
“If you’re a Costa thief, you dress to blend in with the clientele. It was probably that guy who was sitting opposite with the black turtleneck. Where’s he gone now?”
We drank our coffees and then left Costa to look for the nearest access point for Regent’s Canal.
* * *
It was getting dark by the time we reached Camden. On the way, we’d picked up khaki army hats and jackets from a vintage clothes shop. We were suitably camouflaged for travelling through Camden.
We’d also stopped at a hardware store in Islington to buy a crowbar. We wouldn’t be safe staying at a hotel. We had to find a building to squat. Pippa and Erika had trained Dani on how to break in to an empty building without damaging the property and giving the police a reason to charge you.
We wanted to be as close to AmizFire as possible. Studying an Ordinance Survey map, Dani circled the row of four-storey Victorian houses on Shakespeare Street that backed onto Primrose Hill. We cased Shakespeare Street from the front trying not to draw attention to ourselves, but, wearing military attire and backpacks, it was luck rather than skill that helped us evade suspicion. Half-way down the street, Dani spotted one of the houses was for sale and looked empty. It had a long driveway and secluded garden at the front and would fit the bill as far as scoping out AmizFire was concerned.
Having chosen our target, we walked up Primrose Hill and took a right into the park annex, which was flat and divided up into football pitches. There was the usual collection of tired dog walkers carrying small freezer bags in their pockets or hands, but they began to dwindle in numbers as dinnertime approached.
When we thought no-one was looking we made a dash for the trees that lined the perimeter fence. When we got to the back wall of the target house, I gave Dani a leg up and then scrambled over myself. Walking up the garden path to the backdoor, I could hear the low growling of the next door neighbour’s dog. Dani opened her bag and fished out a pack of dog snacks. She took out a handful of pellets and cast them over the fence.
The back of the house had a large kitchen window on the left-hand side and a back door and a utility room on the right. The backdoor was made of stout wood, but had a cat flap built into the lower panel. The window to the right of the backdoor was divided into a large lower section of clean glass and a narrow oblong window opening at the top. This was the weakest point at the back of the house. Dani would definitely be able to fit through it, so I got out the crowbar and prepared to get to work jemmying the window. It was going to be noisy so the quicker I did it, the better. I was hoping the neighbours would be comatose on Shiraz and pasta by now and would actively avoid hearing anything that would necessitate leaving the comfort of their sofas. I worked the crowbar into the small gap between the window frame and the window. Holding the crowbar in the gap with my left hand, I gave the end a whack with the palm of my right hand. But it slipped out of my grasp and clattered against the lower windowpane. It was loud. The window vibrated, the dog in the neighbour’s garden started barking and Dani let out a screamed whisper of admonishment: “Lishman!!”
“What?” I whispered back. “It’s the only way.”
“No, it’s not. The first rule of housebreaking: always check for a key.”
And she handed me the key she’d fished out from under a plant pot housing a dried up spider plant.
“Dani, you’re a genius.”
I slid the key into the backdoor, turned it clockwise against the stiff mechanism of the lock and managed to open the door.
“Okay, Dani. Quick tour of the house to make sure nobody’s here and then up to the attic. Torches only pointed to the ground.”
“Wow, look at this place. We could squat it.”
“Dani!”
We crept around the ground floor checking each room. There were cups and glasses and a few items of furniture, but most of it was ripped or damaged in some way. It was clear that no-one had lived there for at least a year.
Satisfied that we were alone, we climbed slowly up three flights of stairs into the attic. Inside there was a floor-to-ceiling dormer window. I found some discarded cushions in one of the cupboards and lay them down on the floor in front of the window. Throwing my coat over the cushions, I lay down on my belly and checked the view out of the window. There was AmizFire in the red brick splendour of the converted match factory, lit by floodlights marking the four corners of its grounds. Alternating spot lights made its stainless steel obelisk appear like a beacon of shimmering mercury in amidst the drab Camden night.
“Do they light it up like that every night? It must cost a fortune,” I said to Dani, as she joined me on the cushions. Then I reached into my haversack and pulled out the binoculars, and fished out a bottle of wine and a packet of Marlboro Red.
“So what do we do now?” said Dani.
“Wait. And hope something happens. Some kind of transportation.”
“How can we be sure that it’s looted art?” said Dani.
“We can’t.”
Dani opened up her side bag and pulled out a flask and poured herself a coffee.
“Have you got doughnuts?” I asked.
“Breakfast bars.”
“Dani, could you go find me a glass for this wine? I would go myself, but you’ll be much quieter.”
Dani sighed, but dutifully crept off downstairs with her torch pointing towards the floor. When I heard that she’d reached the ground floor and was checking in cupboards, I went over to her backpack and started pulling out the contents. Reaching down the spine of her bag, I came across something heavy and metal. I pulled it out of the bag. It was the gun and ammunition from Erika and Pippa’s flat. Earlier, she hadn’t gone to warn them, but to fetch their weapon. I heard Dani coming back up the stairs so returned everything to the bag apart from the ammunition, which I hid in the bottom of my bag.
“Everything okay?” she said, handing me a child’s scratched and dirty beaker.
“Yeah, not a sound. The dog’s stopped barking. No activity at AmizFire.”
It was eight o’clock. An hour had passed by without anybody entering or exiting the AmizFire gates. Lots of people had walked by on their way to a night out in Camden.
I told Dani, we should take turns sleeping, so we could keep watch all night. Dani volunteered to take the first shift. I turned on my side and tried to shut down my mind.
* * *
“Wake up!” said Dani nudging me in the ribs.
“Wa!”
“There are a lot of cars. Limousines.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight-thirty.”
I raised my head and saw that there was a whole load of activity taking place.
“It must be an exhibition opening,” said Dani, excitedly.
“Of course, the Diane Thompson exhibition is opening tonight. April 16th. We published the article last week to promote it.”
“Tommy Burns near the obelisk, welcoming guests,” said Dani, handing me the binoculars.
And then, seeing Tommy Burns and the swarms of people entering the building, it all seemed to make sense.
“Dani, the mystery caller asked about April 16th. ‘What did Marty say about April 16th?’ she said. Do you think Marty and Natasha Rok planned to be there tonight? With all
the people attending the party, and Natasha working there, Marty could have hidden in the building till everyone left. Perhaps Natasha had identified a location.”
“There must be much safer places in London to stash art. Why would they risk keeping it here?” asked Dani.
“Hubris?” I said.
As we looked on, I thought about Rilke’s revelation that occult organisations tend to follow a code of ethics that involves informing the public about their activities. I assumed it was to give them the moral high ground regarding disclosure. But was it also a method of building their brand? Pay writers to produce books and articles implying they have a hand in everything from the Russian Revolution to the death of Pope John Paul I, then let the conspiracy theorists do the work of declaring them omnipotent and omnipresent. In turn, increasing their dominion until a mere mention of their name conjures up so much fear that it reduces the man on the street to a gibbering wreck. But with that, there would be a danger of hubris. The mistake of tyrants and criminal organisations throughout history, from Hitler to the Krays. The question was, thinking about the ‘Organisation’, was it merely a successful East London crime gang that had synergised with a group of aristocrats? Or were they, as the mystery caller had suggested, ‘dangerous’ and ‘everywhere’?
We watched people coming and going for hours in cars, taxis and vans. Anyone of which may have been transporting looted art. We had no way of knowing.
Several hours later when all the party guests were long gone, I’d drifted off to sleep again, the empty bottle of wine on the windowsill beside my head.
“Lishman!” Dani called quietly, poking my ear with her finger.
“Eh?”
“A police car.”
“Oh.”
I used my elbows to lever myself off the ground and took the binoculars off Dani. Sure enough, there was a panda car parked up outside the AmizFire gates. Nobody got out of the car. We watched it with baited breath hoping that something, anything, would give us a clue as to whether something was going on with the missing art. Half an hour later, the panda car drove off. Then there was nothing. Only it wasn’t completely quiet.
“Do you hear that?” I said.
“What?”
“Like a thud. A repetitive thud. Like the city’s heartbeat.”
I leant forward and lifted the latch on the dormer window and cracked it open. Sure enough there was a thud, some kind of bass line.
“I hear it,” said Dani. “Do you think there’s an after-party rave?”
“Sounds like they’re recreating Eyes Wide Shut down there.”
We thought it better to leave the house while the neighbours were still sleeping. So at about five-thirty, leaving our bags hidden in the attic, Dani and I exited by the backdoor just as the morning light started to spread across the sky. We decided that we had to find a way of getting inside AmizFire. Dani had the idea of enlisting the street raptors over at Natasha’s block. I thought a break in to a building of that scale would be way out of their league. We also had to find someone that could translate Natasha’s notes. None of this could be done from the attic of an empty house.
We trekked back across the park and climbed Primrose Hill. Then we walked across Primrose Hill Bridge and down Camden Road to the station. At the station kiosk I grabbed a newspaper. The headline on the billboard said: Pentonville Strangler Fire
Sitting in a greasy spoon, Dani and I read through the front page story. I couldn’t really take it in. The phrases were jumbled up in my mind, but I’d seen enough to make sense of the story: Martin Stewart dead, fire, incinerated, cottage, Scotland, confession, letter, Scotland Yard, Natasha Rokitzky.
“Scotch mist?” asked Dani.
I couldn’t answer. My mind was a broken toy.
Chapter Fifteen
How would I get past the security guards? How would I avoid triggering the alarm? What was I looking for and where would I find it? I lay on the cushions despondently going over the same tired old scenarios in my head as I stared at the AmizFire building through the attic window. How would I succeed where Marty had failed? How would I avoid the same fate?
Marty’s fickle fate.
Just as night drew in, my mobile phone, which was lying on the wooden floorboards beside me, started vibrating. I made a grab for it and clicked answer. I heard Mickey Riley’s Newcastle accent.
“...Despite what I thought of him. Despite what he did,” said Riley, after an awkward preamble. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Understood, Mickey. Is that why you called?”
I knew the guilt over Marty’s death was coming. It was in the post. And I didn’t want to talk about it.
“There’ll be a small service in Newcastle tomorrow. The press don’t know about it. But invite anyone you think ought to be there.”
That would take me away from my quarry. It would be dangerous too. I wondered could I trust Mickey Riley? Could I trust anyone?
“How did you find out about the service?” I asked.
“I... I...” he stuttered. “I arranged it on Lillian’s behalf, through my contacts in the force. This kind of invite-only funeral happens a lot with murderers, especially when...”
If I had to trust anyone, I decided, it would be Riley. I’d never known him to lie, even when it meant needlessly upsetting someone, usually his latest girlfriend fishing for a compliment and instead getting the unmitigated bluntness of a Geordie man.
“Is there a body?” I asked.
“There are ashes. Part furniture, part house, part body. Marty’s in there somewhere.”
“Have you made any progress since the last time I saw you?”
“Nothing I’ve found out will make any of this look any better,” said Riley, with uncharacteristic reticence.
* * *
I stopped at WH Smith’s to buy a selection of newspapers and picked up a large take-away coffee from a faux-French kiosk then hurried over to platform 12 where the Newcastle train was waiting. I boarded and headed for the Standard Class compartment. It was empty so I got a table to myself. I sat down, spread the newspapers across the table, removed the lid from my coffee, and began to read through all the articles about Marty’s death.
One of the articles, a double-page spread about the Pentonville Strangler, contained a map. The headline was ‘A Killer on the Road’ taken from The Doors’ Riders on the Storm. The next line, ‘his brain is squirming like a toad’ was written in a caption under a photo of Marty. The map showed Marty’s trajectory from London to Scotland. There were flags along the way detailing the various sightings of the ‘killer’ as he cut his swath across the UK, staying in B&Bs and small hotels. Some of the flags were linked to bubbles in which witness anecdotes were quoted. Marty’s final destination was a small village in the north west of Scotland, ironically or not, named Killin. According to the story, Marty had hired a small cottage on the hill overlooking the village. He’d spent two days and two nights there. On the third morning, he’d written a confession to the murder of Natasha Rokitzky and made allusions to having committed other murders. He’d walked down into the village and bought an envelope and a stamp and sent the letter to Scotland Yard. After that, he’d gone to the local supermarket and bought some camping gas, some petrol and a bottle of whisky. Back at the cottage, he’d soaked the furniture in petrol. It is supposed that he drank the whisky first. He’d then set fire to the furniture causing the cottage to go up in flames. The camping gas caused a huge explosion alerting people down in the village. By the time the emergency services arrived, nothing was left of Marty but tiny remnants of charred flesh and bone. Tests were done of hair samples found on a plastic brush that the explosion had thrown into the garden. The result was affirmative. It was Marty.
I read three or four more articles before I’d had my fill. The newspapers wove stories around the few facts that the police must have given the journalists. They’d also managed to get some information by doorstepping his colleagues and the people he’d come across while
on the run. But the real source of the story was gone. Marty was ashes. Natasha was dead. Whatever the police said now was gospel. There was no-one to challenge it. Correction. Only the real murderer could challenge the police version of events.
I folded up the papers and went along to the refreshments carriage to top up my caffeine levels. On my return I fished around in my bag and pulled out another of Rilke’s books. I spent the next two hours of the train journey to Newcastle trying to read between the lines of his dramatically written landscape of Britain ruled by an occult mafia with links to aristocracy and the highest offices of the land. I was sure there would be some element of truth among the red herrings, exaggerations and obfuscation and I wanted to root it out.
It is Darwinistic but it is neither cult, club nor secret society. It is rather an ideology. And everyone espoused to this set of ideas belongs to it. Cells can appear anywhere and they represent evil in its most meritocratic form. It is easily absorbed by other structures, be they political parties, government institutions or mercantile corporations. It is blind to creed, class and colour in its search for synergy.
Synergy, there was that word again. It was an organisation that kept adding to itself to grow in power and influence. The way Rilke described it was similar to how terror ‘experts’ were describing Al Qaeda on the news. It did not exist as an organisation with central command. The figurehead existed. Its ideas existed. And, unlike myself and Dani, ideas were bulletproof.
And then I was hit by a sudden compulsion to find something in the newspaper I’d seen out of the corner of my eye, but not bothered to read. I opened the newspaper and spread it out across the table. Sure enough, there it was on the sixth page in a one column news roundup: a small twenty word article that told me, in case there was any doubt, just how dangerous this organisation was. The text bore the headline: Hackney House Firebombed. There had been no casualties. I grabbed my phone and began writing a message to Dani. She would have to resist the urge to look for Pippa and Erika. She had to stay hidden. Her life depended on it.